We saw the doctor yesterday and they read his heart monitor. The doctor really doesn’t think it’s neurological (neuro cardiogenic syncope, “syncope” = fainting) which is a good thing because that’s pretty much not treatable and he likely wouldn’t be able to drive…well, technically ever.

But when they read the monitor they saw that he just had arryhthmia (irregular heartbeat) during that episode last week. The way his heart monitor works is if his heart rate goes higher than a certain amount or lower than a certain amount, or if it detects irregular heartbeat, it will automatically record the episode. But he also has a little remote that he can manually “mark” an event on it and it will record from 9 minutes prior to when he marked it, until some time afterward.

The problem is, when he started feeling funny he was on the freeway. He had to pull off the offramp, wait at the red light (however long that was, he was in and out during that time) and then pull into the liquor store parking lot. Then he passed out and when he came to is when he marked the event. It was definitely longer than 9 minutes since the episode had started so we did NOT get the episode itself recorded unfortunately. But for the time it recorded it showed bouts of irregular heart rhythm and then a sudden bout of tachycardia (fast heartrate) about 180 bpm out of nowhere, while he was at rest, and lots of bradycardia (low heartrate). During the episode his heart rate probably dropped down to about 30 bpm which is what would make him feel that way.

So it’s not likely neurological but it’s still something wrong with his heart. So instead of increasing his dose again on this med (Rhythmol) which makes him feel like crap all day, the doctor is giving him this brand new medicine which is supposed to be great and have virtually no side effects.

We’ll try it out for 2 months and see how it goes, if he still has problems then they’ll discuss having the ablation done.

Meanwhile, he can NOT drive during this 2 months which sucks.